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| Before the bidding began |
Phu plays this down, but I think it's worth sharing - when he started making and selling his photo and recipe books, he wanted to donate the profits to a local cause in the community. He got in touch with the director of the Birmingham Free Clinic, Mary Herbert, and for the past 3 years, he's been an enthusiastic supporter, forwarding proceeds from his book sales and donating items for their annual fundraising auction.
I got the print earlier this week, and will be shipping it out to the winning bidder as soon as we cut the matboard to frame her and make her look all nice 'n purdy.
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| When we're done with the matboard she's gonna look even purdier |
Aside from preparing the print, I've been working on inking all the pages. I'm halfway done and would update with some photos... but we don't want to give away too much of the book before it's done!
So I thought I'd do a post on what kind of tools I've been using in this drawing process. Like a celebrity "What's in her purse?" thing... except that I'm not famous... and it's a pencil case... and there's no cuticle salve to be found.
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| No salvation for dry cuticles here |
From left to right, that is a Uni-ball Signo gel pen (you know it's Japanese because they crafted that baby with a tip whose diameter is precise to two significant digits), a Pentel Pocket Brush pen, an old mechanical pencil, an old regular pencil, an old white eraser, and a box of ink cartridges for the brush pen. In the background is a très chic designer pencil case that mon amour got me from the runways of... Taiwan.
Ok yes I know, it's pretty normal stuff... hey, I'm no professional, and I ain't got the fancy stuff. Probably the fanciest thing I have is the brush pen.
I like it because it's refillable, the tip is durable and just the right firmness for what I'm drawing, and it's portable. It's the main tool I've been using to ink the book pages. You can get a pretty fine line with it, until you're pretty much limited by how steady you can keep your hand while using a brush. For the really fine lines, I use a pen (yes, that 0.28mm marvel of a pen).
The price of trying to be fancy when you're really not is that you don't have a lot of resources. I have a home office-grade colour printer, which I doesn't take thick paper (like bristol board) very well. If I had done my research online, I would have found the disgruntled reviews by people who were unable to print onto cardstock earlier.
My first attempts at feeding bristol board through this thing resulted in failure and passive-aggressive printer prompts.
While I'm not fancy enough to buy a new printer with the ability to print on thick paper, I did come up with a solution for this.
Attention all you Epson Expression Home XP-400 Small-in-One™ printer owners out there. You can get it to print onto thick paper if you trick it into thinking it's taking regular paper. I taped a thin strip of scrap regular paper to the edge of the bristol board, and made sure it was flush with the bristol board when the paper feeder caught it. Works on the first try every time I use this method. Voilà.
That's it for this post! If you're still reading this, hopefully you gained some valuable niche knowledge about printer troubleshooting... if that's not the reason you're still reading, thanks for being an awesome friend or acquaintance or stranger with enough interest to make it to the end :)
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| Can you guess which one I've had since junior high? |
I also have kneaded erasers in my pencil case... to be fair, I think the
older almost-black one was darker than the new one even when I first got it.
The old one smells kinda weird now, but I keep it due to my irrational
sentimental attachment to it.
The other main tool I've been using lately is my printer. Like I
described in a previous post, I scan in my pencils, turn them
blue, then print them out and ink over them. I've been using an inkjet and
printing onto bristol board, because I'm trying to fancy about it.
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| No exaggeration, it's really smooth |
The price of trying to be fancy when you're really not is that you don't have a lot of resources. I have a home office-grade colour printer, which I doesn't take thick paper (like bristol board) very well. If I had done my research online, I would have found the disgruntled reviews by people who were unable to print onto cardstock earlier.
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| So innocent-looking... until... |
My first attempts at feeding bristol board through this thing resulted in failure and passive-aggressive printer prompts.
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| You started it |
While I'm not fancy enough to buy a new printer with the ability to print on thick paper, I did come up with a solution for this.
Attention all you Epson Expression Home XP-400 Small-in-One™ printer owners out there. You can get it to print onto thick paper if you trick it into thinking it's taking regular paper. I taped a thin strip of scrap regular paper to the edge of the bristol board, and made sure it was flush with the bristol board when the paper feeder caught it. Works on the first try every time I use this method. Voilà.
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| This still doesn't mean we're friends |
That's it for this post! If you're still reading this, hopefully you gained some valuable niche knowledge about printer troubleshooting... if that's not the reason you're still reading, thanks for being an awesome friend or acquaintance or stranger with enough interest to make it to the end :)
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